With Wolverine at least its probably because of his ability to regenerate. He can use the full extent of his muscles without worrying about them tearing. Basically he’s in top physical condition at all times.

It’s more that his muscles heal extremly fast. A normal human needs about 2-3 days rest after an extensive workout. He only needs a moment while putting on more weight plates… or switching to another enemy. It could be possoble that every time he faces off with a challange that requiers his entire strength, he gets stronger.
Add his long lifetime into that mix and you would basically end up with the body of The Rock without even trying.

In that scenario, you would need to assume that another secondary power has to be creating protein through consumption of beer and cigarsmoke.

Wolverine superfast healing is the perfect storm of muscular enhancement advantages: imagine being able to power through tens of thousands of repetition of execise nonstop because your body evacuates lactic acid like a vegas cadino spotting a card counter in addition to damaged muscle fibers regrowing stronger in SECONDS. Wolverine could rack up YEARS of body building in DAYS.

Regarding “Required Secondary Powers”… This is one of my two favorite parts of the superhero genre to pursue in RPG’s \ stories. The other, for the record, is the concept of Employable Superpowers (“Why use your powers to rob banks when you can make a comfortable living using them instead?”).

You ever hear that joke about “looking good in your costume\keeping it on in combat” being the most common superpower? I’ve always argued that “protection from the side effects of your powers and the ability to actively use them” is actually the most common power.

The particular example was actually covered during the Silver Age in the character of Ultra Boy (Legion of Super Heroes). The abbreviated concept is that he has Superman’s powers, with the limitation that he has them one at a time. This puts a cap on the upper-range of some of them: he can’t use his full super strength without the super toughness; he can’t use his full super speed without super endurance\toughness, etc.

Another example was the Invisible Woman one-off in my long-running superheroic RPG campaign. One of her powers was a literal radar sense to compensate for the way light energy simply passed through her eyes. A clever enemy could use the radar signal coming from her to detect her…

Reminds me of when Firestar joined the Avengers. Her microwave-based fire powers were incredibly strong, but she wasn’t immune to the radiation that they gave off, putting her at risk of becoming sterile.
Then Hank Pym came along and built a suit to fix the problem. I don’t think he used the Trope by name, but he came close.

In punching power it seems like MMA/top level boxer grade strength, it’s enough to frature ordinary bone in the fingers, but not enough to put more than a moderate stain or dent in wall tiles (that might be attached to concrete).

Cages power was based on an attempt to give someone the ability to heal faster from injury. A prison guard who wanted him dead cranked up all the settings and the procedure used a viral effect based on the amount of inputted energy to naturally increase his body density from the outside in,… the increased density gives him “strength beyond belief” and his original “steel-hard skin”.
I know this because I followed the character thru his three power-downs and powerset increases which require the chemical bath to return him to human norms and a lot of energy to reactivate the viral effect. this is how his strength increased from 3 tons to 10 tons, to 25 tons to 50 tons and “unbreakable skin”.
The next season on Netflix will have him facing someone who received more of the viral, but the same amount of energy.

Au contraire, mon ami.
Thanks for answering my question.
There was a guy from the New Warriors that acquired his powers similarly, making his 13 year old body like a full grown up, muscular guy, only that he was bathed in a sewer.
Can’t recall the name but he wore a biker outfit with a luchador mask.